


it started in a bar fight

by winter_hiems



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Bar Fight, Bar Room Brawl, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Immortality, Canon-Typical Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Carrying, Crushes, Don't copy to another site, Drinking, F/M, First Kiss, Flirting, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Horseback Riding, How did a horse even get on a space station, Injury, Intimacy, Jonny is a cowboy but he isn't good at horse riding, Kissing, Making Out, Mutual Pining, Nobody in The Mechanisms is Straight, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Octokittens (The Mechanisms) - Freeform, Or at least as soft as Jonny gets, Pining, Post-Story: Out (The Mechanisms), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rescuing Each Other, Scars, Self-Esteem Issues, Soft Jonny d'Ville, Touching, Trauma, badassery, canon-typical trauma, horse riding, mild self-esteem issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29563524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winter_hiems/pseuds/winter_hiems
Summary: If someone asked Jonny d’Ville if he had a crush, he’d shoot them in the face. That doesn’t mean that hedoesn’thave a crush. It just means that he wants people to respect his privacy.
Relationships: Jonny d'Ville/Original Character(s), Jonny d'Ville/Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 17





	1. Chapter 1

It started, as all the best things do, in a bar fight. 

Here’s how that fight got started: 

A woman, drinking alone. She holds her alcohol pretty well so she isn’t holding back, but she also isn’t in a hurry, so she’s sipping her vodka instead of downing it. She’s wearing the sort of clothes that can live through a lot of wear and tear, and her left cheek is a mess of scars. 

A guy. Not a man; a guy. Sidles up to her and starts chatting. Doesn’t get much of a response. But he doesn’t get the message and keeps on talking. 

He tries to take her hand and she shoves him off. “Don’t touch me, creep!” 

Not many people look up. It’s that kind of bar. 

The guy doesn’t take kindly to that. “Hey, you should be grateful that I’m giving you any attention at all. Face like that and most men wouldn’t even look at you.” He turns nasty. Picks up a bottle from the bar, smashes the end of it to make a nasty ring of jagged glass. “How about I teach you to be grateful, huh? You thank me for giving you my time, and maybe I won’t scratch up your other cheek.” 

If the guy was smarter, he would have noticed that the woman was more sober than him. Taller, too, and more muscular. He would have noticed that she held herself like someone who could throw a punch, and that her right hand was comfortably close to a wicked little knife in her thigh sheath. 

But he wasn’t a smart guy, and he’d already made a fatal mistake: taking the bottle. 

The bottle he’d picked up had already been opened and mostly drunk. Only a few swallows of alcohol had been left inside, and they’d spilled harmlessly onto the floor when the guy had smashed it. But the bottle had belonged to Jonny d’Ville. And he’d really been looking forward to those last few swallows. 

Jonny turned. “Hey, that’s my fucking drink!” 

He hit the guy square on, knocking him into another patron, who retaliated with a punch, and before long it was a full-blown bar fight. The kind that’s all brutal knocks and flailing limbs, and if you don’t know what you’re doing then you go down fast. 

The woman ended up fighting alongside the Mechanisms, mostly because they were in proximity to each other and hadn’t punched each other yet, so had formed a wordless agreement to punch everyone else instead. She didn’t know them and they didn’t know her, but that was about to change. 

Towards the end of what had become a very fine example of a classic bar fight, one of the guys on the other side of the room pulled a gun, and the woman took a bullet to the chest. It went right through her. 

The man ran off, leaving the Mechanisms alone in a bar surrounded by many, many corpses. 

Ashes looked down at the dead woman. “That’s a shame. She really knew how to throw a punch.” 

The Mechanisms had barely begun their night of drinking, so Ashes hopped over the bar – ignoring the broken glass that covered it – and started serving, passing Jonny a fresh bottle to replace the one that had been taken. He’d barely pulled the top off when there was a spluttering and a coughing behind him. 

The Mechanisms in front of the bar turned around, and Ashes leaned over, watching as the woman slowly sat up. 

She looked down at the hole in her chest, and coughed once again. “Fuck. I really liked this shirt.” 

Raphaella frowned. “You were dead.” 

The woman frowned. “Would you believe that I was resting my eyes?” 

“No.” 

She got to her feet, brushing herself off. “Then pass me a bottle of something strong, and maybe I’ll tell you a story.” 

*

They were sat on mismatched chairs around one of the few intact tables. 

Lady – she called herself Lady S, and when Marius asked what the S stood for, she said it stood for Sir – took a swig from her bottle, and began. 

“I was in a bar – a nicer bar than this one, but still a bar – and it was an open mic night. I didn’t usually sing in front of other people, but my friends were there and they were encouraging me, so I got up and did a few songs. Later that evening, this woman sat next to me and said that she liked my voice. She was kind of good-looking, so I started flirting a bit. Dr Carmilla, she called herself.” 

The Mechanisms all took a collective breath. 

“What?” asked Lady, “Do you know her?” 

“She made us,” said Jonny darkly. 

“Made you how?” 

So Jonny undid the top few buttons of his waistcoat and the top few buttons of his shirt, and showed her the metal wired into his chest. “She cut us up and wired us up and now we don’t die.” 

Lady nodded. “Same for me. She said she used to be in a band, but she left and after a while going solo, she was looking to put together a group again. Asked me if I played any instruments, if I’d be interested.” 

“I told her that I played the violin and I was learning the guitar, but that I really needed my day job, so I could only play music casually, not for a career. I couldn’t waste my life on being a low-paid musician. Then she asked me what if I found a way to have a longer life, a life with plenty of time to waste, and I told her that sounded nice but it was never going to happen to me. I guess she must have put something in my drink, because the next thing I remember, I was face down on an operating table while she wired me up.” 

Lady stood and pulled her long dark hair to one side, revealing the metal that went down the back of her neck. “It goes right the way down to the base of my spine. I think it might even _be_ my spine, I don’t know if any of the original bones are left.” 

Jonny surged to his feet, picked up a bar stool, and started smashing it to pieces against the floor. “Motherfucking pissing fuck!” 

Lady frowned. “What’s wrong?” 

He turned, eyes wild. “I threw that – that monster – I threw her out of a fucking airlock so that she wouldn’t hurt anyone else, and she fucking survived and she fucking carried on with her unsolicited immortality bullshit, and I spent fucking centuries believing that I’d killed the closest thing I have to a mother, only I fucking didn’t! I fucking failed! She won.” 

“… So you were the one who threw her off the ship?” asked Raphaella. 

“Apparently not fucking hard enough!” 

Lady held up her hands. “Look, I don’t know if this makes things better or worse, but I think I might have killed her.” 

Things were quiet for approximately thirteen seconds. 

“How?” asked Ashes. 

Lady ran a hand through her hair. “I… once the spine was on me and the doctor explained… I was pretty shaken. I just sort of went along with what she said. But eventually I figured out that she was planning to make more immortals like me, so I – I kind of rigged a corridor of the ship so that some very, very heavy objects dropped on her, and then I… I mean I don’t like to dwell on those memories that much, but I cut her up, and an electric saw was involved. Then I put all the bits in boxes and put the boxes in a torpedo and fired the torpedo into a black hole.” 

“A black hole.” said Ashes. 

“…yes.” 

Jonny let out a long breath. “Well that’s a fucking relief. I bet even she would have trouble coming back from that.” 

“So,” said Lady, “What now? I’ve never met anyone like me before.” 

“You can stay with us if you want,” said Ashes. 

“It’s not for you to offer, Ashes,” said Jonny. “I’m the captain.” 

“You’re the first mate,” said Ivy. 

“Captain.” 

“Look,” said Lady, “All I really need to know is who I need to impress to get a place with you lot.” 

“No-one,” said Jonny. “You’re in.” 

*

After a week of getting settled on the Aurora (and she could already feel herself falling in love with her new home), Lady found Jonny d’Ville in a spare room, surrounded by empty bottles. 

He was drunk, and judging from her couple hundred years of experience, not the happy kind of drunk. 

“Whatever you’re going through with this –” Lady waved her hand in the general direction of the bottles, “Do you want to talk about it?” 

Jonny’s voice slurred. “What did it feel like? Killing Dr Carmilla?” 

“Honestly? I felt awful afterwards. Completely wracked by guilt, because sure, she was awful, but she was still a person. It took maybe five years for me to be okay with it. And now it’s just something I did.” 

“Was it satisfying?” 

“… yes. Yes, it was. I’d been tense for weeks leading up to it, but watching her disappear into that black hole? I breathed easy for the first time in I don’t know how long.” 

“Good.” 

Jonny returned to his drinking, and Lady left him to it. 

*

After a few months, Lady had settled right in as the Aurora’s engineer. She liked talking to the ship, and liked it when the ship talked back. She’d found herself slipping easily into friendship with the rest of the crew, and when there wasn’t anything to do, she could count on Ivy for a chat about their mutual love of books. 

She and the other Mechanisms were sprawled over the mismatched sofas in the rec room when Ashes asked her a question. 

“If I asked you how you got your scars, would you shoot me? Because then I won’t ask.” 

“I want to know too,” said Ivy. “For the archive.” 

Lady shrugged. “Sure. I mean, everyone asks eventually. Might as well tell you.” 

At the promise of a tale, everyone subtly drew together for whatever story was about to be told. 

“So I wasn’t dirt poor as a kid, but my parents had little enough money. The ceiling of my bedroom leaked whenever it rained. But I was smart enough to get a scholarship at the best school nearby – doesn’t matter which planet, by the way, I’m never going back there – and a scholarship promised better things for me. Or at least the kind of education where I’d get a job with enough money to not go hungry. 

“So I went. Didn’t want to disappoint my parents, and I guess I was excited to see how the other half lived. I was so fucking naïve. Didn’t realise that my second-hand school uniform alone made me a target. The bullying wasn’t bad at first, until…” Lady sipped her drink. “See, in every school like that, there was a queen bee. She liked watching the scholarship kids struggle, and me? I was trying so hard to do well, to prove that I belonged there, that I didn’t struggle with the lessons or anything, really. And I was so focused on proving my worth that I didn’t see the enemy I was making. 

“There were small things at first. Pushes and shoves. I didn’t react. I thought that not reacting would make her leave me alone. Like I said, I was fucking naïve. So she decided to escalate, and one lunchtime she had three of her cronies hold me down while she took a craft knife to my face. I was eleven. And the joke wasn’t just that she’d fucked up my face, it was the fact that my parents would never be able to afford the plastic surgery to fix it. Afterwards, the teachers suggested I might like to leave the school, and I did, and she? She didn’t even get detention for it, her parents were that rich.” 

Lady pushed her hair behind her ear and gestured to her face. “Ta-da.” A pause. “Do any of you remember having a set moral code?” 

“Yes,” said Ivy. 

“Sort of,” said Marius. 

“Not really,” said Jonny. 

“Well,” said Lady, “After I killed the Doc, I told myself that I wouldn’t let immortality crush my morals. That lasted about twenty-ish years, until one day I was watching a tv in some spaceport somewhere, and I saw her. The last time I saw her we were both eleven, but I knew her. She looked old – the rich kind of old, plastic-surgery-to-make-her-look-young old. It was a tv show where she was showing people around her house. It was huge. She had a husband and children. She was rich and she was happy and I hated her.” Lady shrugged. “So I killed her. Then I killed the women who’d been the girls who held me down. And that was the end of me having a moral code.” A pause. “You know why I chose the name Lady S? It’s so that, first name or last name, people talk to me like I have authority. Like I deserve respect. Nobody gets to treat me like dirt ever again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lady Sir is one of those OCs where I’m begging her to have a better name, and she looks me dead in the eyes and refuses to have a better name.
> 
> This fic is set after Nastya went Out, so the Aurora is short an engineer.
> 
> It’s my headcanon that if a Mech has scars from before mechanisation, the scars stay even if the skin is completely removed and re-healed, so there’s nothing Lady can do to get rid of her scars.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always welcome <3
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own the characters. I am not making money from this work.


	2. Chapter 2

_A little under two centuries later…_

Jonny knew things were bed when he couldn’t even get drunk enthusiastically. If he wanted to, he could drain the bottle, but he could barely bring himself to sip it. Probably didn’t help that it tasted more like vinegar than liquor. 

He’d got separated from the other Mechanisms a few decades back, and even though he knew he’d find his way back to the Aurora eventually, he had to admit that he was starting to miss them. 

The brutal inside jokes and the target practise and the band practise and the octokittens. 

And the company. He missed the company of those who understood him better than anyone else in the universe. 

The more he half-sipped the disgusting liquor, the more Jonny had to admit that he was missing one person in particular. 

He’d catch sight of a dark-haired woman across a room and think it was her, then she’d turn, and it wouldn’t be her. 

He missed those pistols of hers that moved so fast, a blur in her hands. Those clever hands, they could do anything. She was an amazing engineer. Jonny remembered fondly the week they’d spent in the rec room as he taught her how to get out of every kind of handcuff in the galaxy. That had been fun. 

Whenever he called himself captain and the others replied, ‘first mate’, Lady didn’t join in. What she did do, sometimes, was call him ‘fearless leader’ in a way that made it clear he didn’t have the tiniest bit of authority over her whatsoever. Fuck, he missed that. 

When he thought back to all the times he’d accidentally shot her on the Aurora, he felt guilty. 

She’d only ever killed him by accident, but sometimes he’d wonder what it would be like for her to do it on purpose. Would she use her knives? Or an expertly placed bullet? She was taller than him, so in hand-to-hand combat that would be something of an advantage. He’d seen her kill, but that wasn’t the same as experiencing it first-hand. 

Oh, who was he kidding? He’d never have a chance with a woman like her. He didn’t know shit about romance, and he’d never had much when it came to looks. 

Besides, hadn’t she had a thing with Ashes a while back? Either they’d been hooking up or it had been a series of very energetic sleepovers. And what about Ivy? Lady and Ivy were always talking to each other about some book or other. 

It had been decades since he’d last seen her. She probably didn’t even think about him anymore. 

Jonny thought about the way the scars would pull at the corner of her mouth when she smiled, and took another half-hearted sip. 

There was a faint clopping sound on the steel floor of the space station corridor that Jonny was slumped in. The clopping sound got louder. 

“Afternoon, fearless leader.” 

Jonny looked up. “Lady?” She looked great. “The fuck are you sitting on?” 

“A horse.” 

“’Thought they were all extinct.” 

“Apparently not. Now climb on.” 

“What – up there?” 

“Yes. Stand on that table if you want to make it easier for yourself.” 

The table had been dumped in the corridor and wasn’t very stable, but Jonny managed to balance on it for long enough to climb onto the horse behind Lady. The blanket over the horse’s back made things marginally more comfortable, but not by much. 

“Okay,” said Lady, “Now hold on with your knees, and if you want to you can put your arms around my waist so you don’t fall off.” 

Jonny did as she asked. He could smell her hair. Oh fuck, how could he possibly be casual about this? 

He couldn’t think of anything to say to her, so instead he just tried to memorise the feeling of being allowed to hold her. 

“You got any bullets in that gun of yours, Jonny?” 

“Wha? Oh, yeah.” 

“Good. Because sooner or later the people I stole this horse from are going to want it back.” 

She kicked the horse with her heels, and it sped up until Jonny really did need to hold on to Lady. He didn’t like the up-and-down jogging motion of horse riding, but when a group of guards rounded the corner and started shouting, things improved: he drew his gun, and started engaging in one of his favourite activities. 

Violence. A lot of shooting and violence. 

By the time they were at the edge of the space station, they were both laughing and windswept. 

There was only one problem: they had planned to escape in a life-pod, and the blast door to the life-pod room was closing. 

Lady jumped from the horse and braced herself under the lowering door, muscles straining around her metal spine, keeping it open. “Jonny, get through!” 

Jonny decided that the fastest way off the horse was just to fall, and by the time he’d darted past the door, Lady was screaming with the pressure of holding it open. 

As she fell back, the door clanged down. 

She lay there quietly for a few seconds, before she muttered, “Fuck. I definitely broke some bones there. And ripped some tendons.” 

She squirmed on the floor a bit, and Jonny realised that she was trying to get up. 

When he picked her up she let out a gasp of pain, and he tried not to feel guilty as he stepped into the smallish life-pod and jettisoned it. 

Lady lay on the floor of the pod while he rigged it to signal the Aurora. In a few hours, the others would pick them up. 

Eventually, he lay down next to her companionably. 

For a while, all was silence, until Jonny said something that had been on his mind for decades. 

“I’m sorry, Lady.” 

“What for?” 

“For not killing Doc Carmilla properly. If I’d done a decent job, you wouldn’t have to deal with –” Jonny gestured to the small life-pod they were currently stranded in, and Lady lying on the floor in pain. “With this.” 

Lady sighed. “It’s okay. I mean, I didn’t ask for this, and it’s hard sometimes, but what would my life have been otherwise? Working some dead-end job just so that I could afford to eat? With the Aurora, I’ve seen things I never could have dreamed of. Besides, it meant meeting you, and all the others, so it’s not awful. And I definitely don’t blame you.” 

“You don’t? That’s – that’s good.” Jonny frowned. “Whenever I call myself the captain, you’re the only one who doesn’t correct me. Why do you do that?” 

Lady turned her head to look at him. “Because I know what it’s like to try to be more than what you were born as. I’m not a highborn lady or a knight, but that’s what I’ve taken for my names to make myself more. Maybe you’re not a captain, but it’s a title you’ve chosen to raise yourself up. I get that with the others it’s an inside joke, but I can’t quite bring myself to put you down.” 

“What is your real name? If you don’t mind me asking.” 

“Elizabeth.” 

“… that’s kind of a weird name.” 

“I know, right? Named after some old queen or something, apparently. It never suited me.” 

“Lady works better.” 

“Definitely.” 

They whiled away the rest of the time reminiscing. When they finally docked with the Aurora, Lady’s bones and tendons were mostly healed, but she still needed Jonny’s help to stagger out of the pod and down the corridors until they reached her quarters. He laid her down on her bed. 

“Thanks, Jonny.” 

“No problem. Anything else you need until you’re feeling better?” Jonny was pretty sure that acts of service counted as a love language. He’d heard that somewhere. 

“…Could you put an octokitten on me?” 

Was that some kind of euphemism? “What?” 

“An octokitten. Could you find one and put it on my chest, just to keep me company until I’m all healed up?” 

“Sure.” 

Lady’s quarters were near engineering, so it didn’t take long for Jonny to find a group of octokittens. Most of them scattered at his arrival, but he grabbed one of the calmer ones and returned, plopping it down gently on Lady’s chest. 

“Thanks. It’s good to have you back, Jonny.” 

As Jonny left Lady’s quarters, he could hear her cooing over the octokitten, which had started purring loudly. (Who’s a cute little octokitten? Is it you? Yes you are!) 

Jonny decided that he hated that specific octokitten. Stupid octokitten, cuddling up to Lady with its stupid smug kitten face. 

*

Back in his quarters, Jonny found a bottle of whiskey lying on his bunk. It was covered with a fine layer of dust, and there was a note attached from Lady. Apparently the whiskey was a welcome-home present, for whenever Jonny happened to get back to the Aurora. 

He wondered how long ago Lady had left it there for him. 

It was bloody good whiskey. 

*

Lady was sitting in engineering doing nothing in particular, when Jonny leaned against the doorframe, rapping his knuckles on the wall to signal his presence. 

She stood and turned. He’d changed into clean clothes, and the usual – excessive – number of belts. “Oh good, you found the whiskey I left.” 

“It’s fucking good stuff.” 

Lady tried to be casual. “Well, you’d been gone for about a decade, so after a while I decided to leave you something nice to find when you got back. Part of me was worried that you wouldn’t be coming back, but I did hope.” She paused. “Oh, and sorry about the biscuits.” 

“Biscuits?” 

“There was a packet of biscuits on your bedside table when I left the whiskey, but they were decades old, so I threw them away.” 

“…Right. That’s fine.” 

She internally scolded herself. _Oh, nice one Lady. You haven’t seen the man in decades, and you’re talking to him about biscuits. I’m sure this conversation is going to have a special place in his mechanical heart forever._

Neither of them said anything, and the silence got awkward. 

Jonny walked forward, held out the whiskey. “So you hoped I’d come back?” He sounded… eager? No, not eager. 

Hopeful? Was she making Jonny d’Ville hopeful? 

Lady took the bottle, sipped it, passed it back, watched Jonny drink, and said, “Yeah. I missed you.” 

“You missed me.” He smiled. Not the usual crazy-Jonny smile that she knew and loved. A different smile. He set the whiskey down on the table behind Lady. They stood very close now. “Honestly wasn’t sure if you would.” 

Her arm moved almost without her own volition until she was cupping his face. Fuck, what was she doing? But she didn’t want to stop. 

Jonny’s eyes were darting, searching her face for something that she didn’t know how to show him. In the end, all she could do was throw caution to the wind and kiss him. 

It was a nice kiss. Softer than she’d expected from a man like Jonny d’Ville. 

After the kiss, they leaned their foreheads together. 

“Wasn’t sure if I was your type,” said Jonny. 

“You know,” said Lady, “Before I joined up with the Mechanisms, I could go years without smiling. Immortality – it had got to me. Then I started living on the Aurora, and I laughed all the time. You make me laugh, and that used to be so rare. Even when you were gone, I could still look back on the times when you were there.” 

“You’re my type,” said Jonny fondly. “Tall and good at killing things.” 

Lady laughed and pulled him in for another kiss. Not the first kiss anymore, so now there was no apprehension, only the two of them enjoying each other. 

They took each other into their arms, Jonny’s firm hands on her waist, her hand sliding up to cradle the back of his head, the kisses growing more intense. 

A voice. “What. The. Fuck.” 

Jonny picked up the nearest heavy object – a wrench – and threw it at Tim, who stood in the doorway. “Fuck off! We were having a moment.” 

Tim had only partially dodged the wrench, and he was grinning. “You? The two of you?” 

Lady drew her pistol and pointed it at him. “Tim, leave. Cease and desist. I have been trying to get with this man for the better part of half a fucking century. Do not ruin this for me now.” 

“C’mon Lady, you’re not going to shoot me. You’re not Jonny.” 

She shot him in the arm. 

“Ow!” 

“Fuck. Off.” 

Tim left. He would probably have told the others all about it within the next half hour. Well, so much for having a private moment. 

Jonny sighed. “You’re so beautiful when you’re shooting at stuff.” 

She grinned back at him, the scars pulling at the corner of her mouth. “I know.” 

The smile still on her face, Lady kissed him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I learned anything from the time Jonny told Briar Rose that he was okay with her killing him, it was that Jonny has a type, and his type is ‘tall woman who could kill him with ease’.
> 
> I couldn’t decide whether to make Jonny asexual in this, so I’ve left it up to interpretation. Similarly with Lady. She’s pan, but whether she’s pan ace or pansexual, or even pan demisexual, I’m not sure.
> 
> I could easily have put something in about Lady feeling self-conscious about her scars, but to be honest, I didn’t want to tell that kind of story. She has scars, but she still has self-confidence, and Jonny thinks she’s super hot anyway.


End file.
